This paper deals with an important part of the school's mission - education for sustainable development (ESD). It describes a teacher training and professional development module produced by the Swedish National Agency for Education, the central administrative authority for the public school system. The module is cross-curricular and aims at teachers in secondary school. When following the module, teachers work in project groups with collective and collegial learning. Five researchers representing the areas of ESD, education, science education and political science author the module.
The module raise questions as; why should we educate for sustainable development?, what content should we deliver and how should we teach? These questions connect to pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).
The why question, the purpose of ESD, is described as composed of three interconnected functions . The functions are defined as:
• Qualification - learning to be able to act and contribute to society • Socialisation - to grow into current norms and values • Subjectification - To develop a personal approach in social contexts and to visualize subjects not previously noted.
The other main issue concerns the question "what". What subject content will be taught in the classroom and what questions will be addressed? The central point is that content issues in ESD always rest on values that lead to conflicts of interest between people. Consequently, they should be treated from a pluralistic point of view.
The third question addresses how ESD should be instructed. It is through activities that students train to use knowledge and thus develop it.
The teacher training and professional development module consists of eight parts dealing with different perspectives on ESD.
Each part is divided in four moments. The participants are working with theory and classrooms activities and reaserach based studies on ther own practice.
2018.
IOSTE 2018: XVIII IOSTE Symposium – Future Educational Challenges From Science & Technology Perspectives, Malmö, Sweden, August 13-17, 2018